The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday said it was confident about its chances in the special municipality elections and denied that its opposition to the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) would sway voters.
With less than 100 days remaining before the elections, senior party leaders met in Taipei to discuss final campaign strategies amid internal reports that DPP candidates were either tied with or winning against their Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) opponents in four of the five races.
DPP spokesperson Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) said the latest polls conducted by the party, which have yet to be released to the public, showed its candidate in Taipei City, Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌), was slightly ahead of Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌).
In Sinbei City, DPP candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was tied with KMT candidate Eric Chu (朱立倫), while the DPP candidates in Greater Tainan and Greater Kaohsiung held comfortable leads over their opponents, Lin said.
Only in Greater Taichung did its candidate, Su Jia-chyuan (蘇嘉全), trail his opponent, Taichung City mayor Jason Hu (胡志強), by a margin of between 8 percent and 10 percent.
According to the poll, dissatisfaction with President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was at about 60 percent.
“These surveys show that the recent [controversy] over the ECFA has not resulted in any significant changes in the year-end election [numbers],” Lin said. “The KMT continues to use the ECFA as an electoral theme, a move that evidently is not welcome in public opinion.”
The ECFA, a trade pact that will lower cross-strait trade barriers, was passed by the KMT-dominated legislature on Wednesday, despite a walkout by DPP lawmakers concerned that the agreement could damage domestic industries and have a negative impact on the labor market.
Tsai said the DPP would not turn its opposition against the agreement into a major campaign theme, as its impact would not be apparent until next year.
“We don’t know how the ECFA can benefit or bring prosperity to local municipalities,” she said. “The way we see it, the benefits will mostly be concentrated on big business and exporters ... not all Taiwanese.”
Tsai Chi-chang (蔡其昌), another DPP spokesperson, said: “The year-end elections are going to be a battle about our governing abilities and our long-term aspirations for these municipalities. The ECFA issue has nothing to do with how well we can govern.”
The DPP also said it would hand responsibility for the Taipei and Sinbei races to former premier Yu Shyi-kun (游錫堃).
Former DPP presidential candidate and former premier Frank Hsieh (謝長廷) will oversee the elections in Greater Kaohsiung and Greater Tainan, where the party is facing a number of potential splits. Yu and Hsieh will both be responsible for Greater Taichung.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods